The Marriage of Summer and Winter
by Measured
Summary: Their old lives were left behind that day. Now with a new life and new names Kouya and Yamato live and love on. Yamato/Kouya


Title: The Marriage of Summer and Winter  
Day/Theme: July nineteenth | In spite of everything– (late) / 3/7/09. I'll undo what heredity's done to you  
Fandom: Loveless  
Character(s)/pairing: Yamato/Kouya  
Summary:. Their old lives were left behind that day. Now with a new life and new names Kouya and Yamato live and love on.  
A/N: A post-series look at them, sort of alludes to spoilers for their arc but if you know them then you probably know the spoilers already.

While unmentioned by names, the names chosen were either Fuyuko (winter's child) or Yuki (snow) and Natsuko (Summer child) depending on your choice (since I can't choose). "Poochi" is a common name for dogs, sort of like Fido. The prose here is a bit thicker and stranger than my usual fair because I've been stuck in a very strange, labyrinthine original work (Of madness! And dystopia! And deaaath!) and it's rubbing off on my fannish stuff, apparently.

This was for Laur / Sahara Storm's birthday.**  
.**

Yamato walked her fingers up Kouya's bare thigh. It's a game she played, sensing how much friction would wake Kouya from her dreamless sleep. Kouya twitched, but didn't wake up, at least not yet. Yamato stifled a giggle as she teasingly went a bit higher. She felt a twitch, two and felt a pillow swat at her. This time, she didn't try to contain her laughter. She fell back into Kouya's side and nuzzled deep as Kouya made sleepy morning sounds.

"Good morning," she said and Kouya mumbled something. Kouya turned over and blinked all in blindness into the light. For how punctual she seemed Kouya could sleep late. At least she would if Yamato kept her up all night...

Yamato didn't feel like playing 'hide the glasses' today. She reached over and placed them lopsided and haphazard on the bridge of her other's nose. Kouya blinked as her world came into focus on Yamato's face.

"See you in the shower?" Yamato said. She said it like a suggestive purr. She said it all with implications dripping down like summer water, summer storms and breezes.

"A second," Kouya muttered, murmured. She rolled over and another day started.

**.**

They both agreed that their names would die with them that day. There could be no more Kouya or Yamato lest Nagisa found them again. Even with new names and faces nothing was sure, especially for two school-aged girls with nothing but each other and clothes on their backs (clothes that would soon have to be discarded for being too recognizable.)

In the dark with the nest of stars and birdfeather sliver soft moon above they died. They rose and held hands as they walked through the cold, wet muck and mire. The grass was dewy dulled spears and scraped against their ankles.

There was a thousand things to say and be said, but she started with the most simple, the most obvious and needed things.

"We can't go back," she said.

"I know," Kouya replied.

"I always wanted to go to Shibuya...." _we could blend in the all the crowds and the colors. They'd never see us for the noise_

"It's too flashy, Yamato. We need somewhere quieter."

Yamato shrugged it aside. Their next destination: Anywhere (as long as Kouya was there) population: 2.

She turned and smiled and it was almost mad how happy she was to be in the middle of nowhere and nothing with her other. She stopped and bowed a waltz and turned to Kouya and started it all over again. She tried an accent, poorly, but it amused her and almost cracked a smile from Kouya.

"And what shall I call you?" Yamato said.

"Name me what you will," Kouya replied..

Yamato smiled, thoughtful and coy. "How about iPoochi?/I"

"...Perhaps I'll take the task myself," Kouya said. Yamato fell to laughing and wrapped an arm about Kouya.

"Are you sure, it'd be cute–"

"I'll do the naming from now on," Kouya said curtly. Though Yamato thought she might be able to help a bit, just maybe.

Between them they chose Kouyama as their surname, one fleeting, and even tongue-in-cheek regard to their past. It was their official second marriage, after the tethers of Sacrifice and Fighter and the sharp edges they'd danced on before. But their new names were a more difficult choice. From Setsuna to Hana, Nikko to Yui They wanted something common, forgettable but Yamato wanted them to be some secret between them.

She remembered the first snow she'd seen, the flakes melting in her fingers. There were so white, so cold for that second before they disappeared. She remembered breathing wisps and feeling the cold sink deep into her shoes. She remembered looking at Kouya the first for their first winter and knowing that if she died then both of them would wither away.

She wrote out the kanji on Kouya's palm, like a brand, like the marking of their bond. Kouya did the same to her palm. (She wondered if Kouya remembered that first festival time or the colored strings of lights. Did she remember the heat that made them both strip down to nothing and lay side by side close yet so far away on the cot? She remember the touches, the sun that burned right through the frail skin and had them both putting aloe on their backs?

Of course she did.)

And with that it is done. Kouya and Yamato were dead; they were new people in new clothes. The names only were used outside of their home, as masks for their very own facade. In the privacy of the small apartment, the names whispered were old, of ghosts and a life they long left behind.

For Kouya it was easy to throw away her name, as easy as tossing old, ripped clothes. Yamato held on tighter; she is optimistic, she remembers the good times. She would never want to cast aside a part of Kouya, even if it had bad memories. She'd call her "Poochi" or Fumiko or any other name but the name Kouya belonged to her and her alone now. When she said it the doors block out the sound and her arms about her other and the lights, ignis fatuus of the past can gather above their bed. The ghosts can't bother them now, all wrapped tight up in each other. The world was so very small beside this soft growing sigh.

**.**

Yamato was too prone to spending their rent money at shops or kareoke bars. Kouya was too studious and hurt her eyes for days for over preparation of the next exam. They don't get close to their neighbors should any of them ever be some compatriot or cousin twice removed of Nanatsu no Tsuki. Life no longer has the sharp edged thrill that defying death had, of fighting and spells and bindings but that is alright too. It is a fictions of the past and things they won't tell to the children they'll never have. Yamato thinks it'd make a good novel, sometimes, but she wasn't a novelist and never will be so it'd just have to go to the air and dust of their memories.

It is their world wherever they reside, territory and country be damned. They were the boundaries of their own country; they were each other's home. They were free.


End file.
